Radiohead and Hans Zimmer Collaborate for Planet Earth: Blue Planet II

When listening to “Bloom” from Radiohead’s 2011 studio effort The King of Limbs, it’s not difficult to find your mind floating in a sea of Thom Yorke’s croon along the rhythmic waves of the innovative instrumentals accompanying him. So it’s only fitting that the song will be reworked for BBC’s Planet Earth: Blue Planet II.

Yorke is collaborating with composer Hans Zimmer to transform “Bloom” into ”(ocean) bloom,” an orchestral reinvention of the song featuring rerecorded Yorke vocals. The piece, produced by Russell Emanuel of Bleeding Fingers Music, will be featured in a prequel to the series.

The original song actually happens to have close ties to the show already: “’Bloom’ was inspired by the original Blue Planet series, so it’s great to be able to come full circle with the song and reimagine it for this incredible landmark’s sequel,” Yorke revealed. He continued, “Hans is a prodigious composer who effortlessly straddles several musical genres, so it was liberating for us all to work with such a talent and see how he wove the sound of the series’ and ‘Bloom’ together.”

Zimmer shares the same admiration for Yorke’s songwriting abilities: “’Bloom’ appears to have been written ahead of its time as it beautifully reflects the jaw-dropping lifeforms and seascapes viewers are introduced to in Blue Planet II.”

Blue Planet II will premiere Sept. 27. A teaser of the prequel and ”(ocean) bloom” will be released online one day prior to the TV debut. Listen to the original version of the song below, and check out a 1995 Radiohead performance from the Paste Cloud.